converting a 1919 to 7.62x54r

I know there is a way to convert a 1919 to use 7.62x54r ... i think BarrelExchange does these conversions. But I'd like to do most of the work myself to "spare" parts I've been collecting as I have little money to finish the build with. (BTW, anyone got a 1919 bolt they wanna unload?)

I will have to send a .308 barrel to BE to have it chambered correctly. But the other parts can't be too hard to re-engineer.

My question is this - has anyone seen a tutorial / build it yourself info for this conversion, or is it BEs design only?

It would just be nice to have the ability to shoot some cheap commie surplus instead of high-dollar NATO rounds.

If you ask BE He might give you all the info that you need. Give it a shot and ask!

Regards,
Tom

http://beltfedplus.com is a supplier of hard-to-get manuals including FMs, TMs and Ordnance Field Serivce BSD books. We also have some parts for 1919 series guns and several accessory projects underway including .22 conversions for the 1917, 1919 and ANM2 .30 cal.

The 7.62x54R conversion to the Browning 1919 was done in WW-II on "Lend-Lease" BMG's to the Soviet Union. Rock Island Arsenal did some of these conversions. The barrels were US .30 chambered for the 7.62x54R Russian cartridge. There were some issues with these barrels as witnessed by crates of blown/buckled top covers surplussed out of PRC (red China) when some of these veterans returned to the US.

The Russians apparently didn't care for these BMG's and handed them off to Chairman Mao. We received both ends of that deal !!

The converted BMG's used the Russian 1910 Maxim belts which are a slightly different spacing from the Browning. .303 Vickers cotton belts are the proper spacing but are too tight stuffed with Russian ammo. The BMG feed covers were altered as well as bolt faces. The bolt faces were machined to a wider T-slot for the Russian rimmed ammo. The BMG bolts are rather hard. The tractor pawl was also altered for the fat rimmed ammo.

A cartridge spacer was added at the front of the feed space atop the trunion block to compensate for the shorter Russian round (9mm shorter I believe). It incorporated a stop tab. A cartridge spaces is also done with the Israeli BMG .308 conversions but for a different thickness.

The usual '06 muzzle booster was employed on the "Lend Lease" Russian BMG's but that ammo would likely benefit from the smaller .308 Israeli booster for a bit more cycle energy.

As I understand it the original barrel problem had to do with use of old format Russian rimmed cartridges which require chamber support right to the rim itself. If you look closely at the breaching of say a DP-28 you see a bit of a volcano-like cone at the breach. The '06 US ammo does not need this inverted cone and the 1919 was designed with a gap occupied mainly by the bolt face T-slot material. Also the larger Russian bullet diameter didn't help either.

The early Russian 1919 re-imports are long gone decades ago. Hope this is helpful.